Friday, January 16, 2009

Friday, January 9, 2009

when i wrote the first thesis chapter, Temaboy--trying to relate the postmodern and the postcolonial in the context of Tema's urbanism--i was somehow preoccupied with the World Bank-inspired idea of the 'worker' positioned against the backdrop of global commerce.

however--today--after a month of administrative negotiations i was finally able to go inside Tema Port and take about a thousand photographs. the fourth was perhaps the most interesting...an updated version of the World Bank photo, here a port 'worker' in front of the marine vessel(s of global commerce) fiddles with his mobile phone... Tema today is not about the oppressed worker trapped in the machine of global capitalism; although such imagery is not too far off-target, Tema also represents the portal of exchange between Ghana-Burkina-Niger-Mali and the rest-of-the-world...workers at the extreme local perimeter of international exchange are still deep within (front-and-center of?) Ghana's communication web...a web that links (nearly) all individuals to each other digitally and simultaneously as networked consumers. whatever happened to the idea of local production?